Med school off probation

Updated 6:22 am, Wednesday, October 9, 2013

SAN ANTONIO – The University of Texas Health Science Center announced two doses of good news this week — the return to full accreditation of its medical school after two years on probation and the $22.7 million renewal of a National Institutes of Health grant for another five years.

Probation didn't mean loss of accreditation. Still, second-year medical student Monica Ruiz, 23, called the announcement “a big win for us” and said students began clapping when they found out via email around lunchtime Monday.

Ruiz, of Rio Grande City, decided to attend medical school at the health science center after the Oct. 2011 vote by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education to place the school on probation for not complying with 10 aspects of its accreditation standards, largely related to the school's curriculum, faculty supervision and lack of centralized clinical activities.

Most Popular

The school's staff had worked hard for two years to remedy those problems, Dr. Francisco González-Scarano, dean of the medical school, said Tuesday. He'd received word last week that the LCME had voted to lift the probationary status.

The committee accredits programs that lead to an M.D. in the United States and Canada. American schools need it to maintain eligibility for some federal grants and programs and for their graduates to be licensed by state boards and be eligible for residencies accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, according to the LCME website.

González said the school redesigned its curriculum from an outdated lecture-driven version to one that emphasizes individual instruction intended to prepare students for lifelong learning as doctors. The school also moved supervision of faculty in seven basic science departments from the dean of the graduate school of biomedical sciences to the dean of the medical school, he said.

Clinical activities have also been centralized in a way that can be tracked by computer, he said.

Ruiz and fellow second-year medical student Kristopher Koch, 30, said they benefit from greater scheduling flexibility that enables them to do things like volunteering in clinics, shadowing a mentor or participating in student organizations.

“I just don't know that I would have had the energy if I'd been in class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” Ruiz said.

González said applications to the medical school increased during the probationary period, following a national trend, but said in instances where students weighed two schools, it could have been a factor in their final decisions.

“The good side of it is, now that we've come off (probation), we really, really pay attention to your education,” he said. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

The health science center will also reap benefits from a five-year, $22.7 million grant renewal from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which will help accelerate the process of moving discoveries in the lab to effective therapies or methods for administering therapies, González said.

Principal investigator Dr. Robert Clark said the 38-county South Texas region has “tremendous health disparities.”

“We have diseases that are wreaking havoc on our population, things like diabetes and its complications, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases,” Clark said. “So our (Clinical and Translational Science Award) and our institute has a vision of accelerating the movement of basic science discoveries out into a clinical test area, into the community, in order to improve the health of our population.”